I met a local resident (CT) who mentioned the Victoria Monday night session while we were discussing concertinas after Dick Miles' Saturday Dalton Arms and Frozen Fingers set. Hope to get there someday (couldn't go on Easter Monday because I went to the final bash in the village hall).

I've been attending the festival since it started, both as a punter and as a performer when the occasion offered. The organisers have consistently brought the best available talent in the field of sea songs and shanties to Lancaster through the years, and there can be no doubting the high regard accorded to David, Val and the rest of the team by anyone who has been the least bit aware of their work. Aside from the Maritime Festival, they were responsible for the Old Calendar Walks program which ran for many years, introducing locals and visitors alike to some of the more esoteric aspects of Lancaster's streets and their history. The Georgian Festival, Jacobite Festival, Guy Fawkes night, Fish and Chips Festival in Morecambe and other events (all now abandoned) brought people out in their thousands.

Unfortunately, as Council employees their remit has changed as departments get shuffled from one budgetary column to another to match changing targets. And despite the council's own website offering grant assistance to any proposed festival that targets tourism (it's hard to find your way to it, but it's there!), there seems to be no local recognition of the multiplier effect that local authority spending on such a festival as this generates - Blackpool and Lancashire Tourism reckoned that last year's Maritime Festival brought in excess of £250,000 spending to the area.

For the past few years the organisers have been bashing their heads against a brick wall.
When you realise that there is someone on the other side of the wall with a demolition ball, you have to admire their persistence, but I worry for their continued health and welfare.

Ross